Sex Versus Survival: The Life and Ideas of Sabina Spielrein - Hardcover

Launer, John

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1468310585 ISBN 13: 9781468310580

Publisher: Abrams Press, 2015

Synopsis

Who was Sabina Spielrein? She is probably best known for her notorious affair with Carl Jung, which was dramatized in the film A Dangerous Method, starring Keira Knightley. Yet her life story is much more compelling than just one famous relationship. Spielrein overcame family and psychological abuse to become a profoundly original thinker in her own right. Sex Versus Survival is the first biography to put her life and ideas at the center of the story and examine Spielrein’s key role in the development of psychoanalysis. Drawing on fresh research into Spielrein’s diaries, papers, and correspondence, John Launer shows how Spielrein’s overlooked ideas―rejected by Freud and Jung but substan-tially vindicated by later developments in psychol-ogy and evolutionary biology―may represent the last and most important stage in the rediscovery of an extraordinary life.

About this title

About the Author:

John Launer is a GP and medical educator known for his work in consultation skills, clinical supervision, and narrative based medicine. He is one of the best-known columnists in the British medical press and has contributed columns and
articles to numerous periodicals and journals, including Times Health Supplement and BMJ, for over twenty years.

Review:

"Spielrein’s legacy has nonetheless endured, and this biography is an invaluable resource for understanding Spielrein’s significance, her progressive thinking, and her groundbreaking contributions to the history of psychoanalysis."—Publishers Weekly

"By the end of Launer’s account, there’s no mistaking what the founding fathers of analysis did to this particular founding mother—and probably to many other women. At least this biography offers Spielrein some retrospective justice." —Jewish Book World

"An impressively researched, documented, and readable biography, this is long overdue but worth the wait." —Library Journal (starred review)

About this edition

• Publisher: Abrams Press
• Publication date: 2015
• ISBN 10: 1468310585
• ISBN 13: 9781468310580
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 384